distinguished virtues. When, therefore, we review the character of such a man, it is, at least, ungenerous and unfair to select the worst parts of his conduct, and dwell entirely upon them. I said, that David's vices were, for the most part, such as were peculiar to his times. Had he figured in profane history, many of these would have been lightly spoken of, if not held up as virtues. Even his basest crime, the destruction of Uriah, would have been less severely commented upon, when the circumstances of his deep contrition had been considered. But standing as he does amongst; the friends of religion, the unbeliever adds still deeper shades to the dark side of the picture, while he draws a veil, as it were, over that which is bright. Tell me, if the author of many of those beautiful psalms, which are undoubtedly his, could. be a depraved man? Could those delightful representations of the works and providence of God;: -those compositions, bearing the characteristics of ardent piety-or genuine devotion-or deep contrition or grateful praise-or unfeigned submission to the divine will, be the effusions of a heart totally estranged from God, or wantonly reckless of the rights and feelings of man? Let the history of this eminent individual serve as a caution to all men, that they take heed lest they fall, rather than as the fruitful source of objections against religion, man's best instructor and chief consolation.

But what explanation can be given of the saying, that he was a man after God's own heart?” That this does not refer to his moral, or his private

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character, we may be certain, because he did many things contrary to the law of God. It can be applicable to him, only in his public character, as a distinguished agent in carrying forward the intentions of divine providence with respect to the Jewish nation. As a prince, he was an eminently great man; he raised his country to power and distinction amongst the nations, and secured to his people safety and independence in the of their enemies. He stood, as it were, the only efficient obstacle to the onward flood of shameful and degrading idolatry, the main support of the worship of the One living and true God,—the inflexible foe of the idol; and, therefore, he was an instrument in the hand of God, fit for the work in which he was engaged. This explanation does, as it seems to me, remove all cause of objection to the passage, David was a man after God's own heart.'

But the imperfections in the character of David and some other eminent individuals mentioned in the ancient scriptures, do, in no wise, affect Christianity. These men were adapted to the times and circumstances in which they appeared, and are not, inasmuch as they are defective, models of character for Christians. Jesus is the Christian's exemplar. He left us an example that we should studiously endeavour to follow.

Let us proceed to notice a few of the striking peculiarities of our Lord's character: we shall herein, detect strong internal evidence of the truth of his pretensions. We observe, first, that the originality of the character of Jesus is an evidence

of his divine mission. The unbeliever of the present day, seeing the force of this argument, has endeavoured to deprive the Christian of it, by asserting that the character of Christ is not a real, but a feigned, character. Herein, he attempts to remove one difficulty by creating another. I say, the delineating of such a character as that of our Saviour's, and the feigning of such a history as that of his, involve circumstances fully as miraculous as the reality itself; for the character of Christ is totally different from that of the men of his age and country, different from all that had ever appeared. Character is fashioned by the circumstances of times and localities, or is formed, in part, by some previous model. The creature of fiction, no less than one that has actually existed, must bear the stamp of these peculiarities. delineating it, the same general likeness must be preserved, it must be in keeping with the circumstances of time and place, or it must be sketched after the models of antiquity. Neither could such a character, as that assigned to Christ, have been drawn, in anticipation of peculiarities that would, perchance, meet, in an individual of after-times. We delineate naturally, only that which we copy from nature. If a man were to draw from imagination a character for future times, it must still be the portrait of a person more or less partaking of the peculiarities of the period in which the picture was composed, or he would risk the drawing of a caricature. Were any man to attempt the delineation of an imaginary character, so utterly unlike any model of antiquity, or of the

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present times, as that of Jesus was unlike the characters of his day, or of any one previous to his day, it would infallibly be an unnatural drawing-a caricature of human feelings, passions, opinions, and actions. But the character of Jesus is perfectly natural, though perfectly original; which is a strong internal evidence, both that it is a real character, and that it is the character of a being who was raised up to exécute a divine commission. Christ pursued a path previously untrodden, unseen, unimagined. He burst forth a light in the midst of darkness. Unlike the models of antiquity, unlike his contemporaries, unlike any character that his times could have produced, unlike any being that the men of his times could have imagined, he was a perfect specimen of human goodness, guided by divine wisdom and truth. I repeat, that when the unbeliever disputes the existence of Jesus, and asserts his character to be feigned, he endeavours to get rid of one difficulty, by creating another equally great; and this affords him no advantage over the Christian on the score of freedom from prejudice or credulity.

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All other men,' says an eminent Christian advocate, are formed in a measure by the spirit of the age; but we can discover in Jesus no impression of the period in which he lived. We know with considerable accuracy the state of society, the modes of thinking, the hopes and expectations of the country in which Jesus was born

* Dr. Channing.

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and grew up; and he is as free from them, and as exalted above them, as if he had lived in another world, or, with every sense shut on the objects around him. His character has in it nothing local or temporary. It can be explained by nothing around him. His history shows him as a solitary being, living for purposes which none but himself comprehended, and enjoying not so much as the sympathy of a single mind. His Apostles, his chosen companions, brought to him the spirit of the age; and nothing shows its strength more strikingly, than the slowness with which it yielded in these honest men to the instructions of Jesus.'

Secondly, the consistency of the character of Jesus affords evidence of his divine mission,Provided that, taking his clue from the ancient prophecies, he had put forth pretensions to the character and office of the Messiah, and that, contrary to all human experience, he had conceived and assumed the extraordinary character which is the subject of the gospel history, it would not have been possible, uniformly, to have maintained it. The disguise must have been penetrated, the real temper and disposition must have appeared in some of the manifold temptations to which Jesus was exposed, in some of the many, diversified, and trying situations in which he was placed. But the character of Jesus was not assumed; it was the genuine offspring of the mind he had received from his heavenly Father, enlightened and expanded by the operations of that spirit from above, which was poured out upon him without measure. In whatsoever circumstances he was placed, we